


I Keep It To Myself; I Know What It Means

by imalwaysstraight



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: (also Gansey The Mom Friend), And Very Gay And Sad, Angst, Bluesey (mentioned), Coming Out, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Oblivious Gansey, Pining, Pre-Relationship, Ronan Lynch is Bad at Feelings, pynch - Freeform, set sometime during BLLB (no spoilers), spoilers for TDT
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-17
Updated: 2016-07-17
Packaged: 2018-07-24 15:36:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,405
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7513781
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imalwaysstraight/pseuds/imalwaysstraight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>So this was how he knew something was really truly wrong with Ronan: he did not know what was wrong with Ronan.<br/>And there was usually something. It was Ronan Lynch, after all; he wasn’t exactly what came to mind when Gansey thought ‘carefree.’<br/>---<br/>Richard Campbell Gansey III excels at knowing: people, wildernesses, myths, realities, and usually even Ronan, who is all of those wrapped up in one mind. Something is up, though, and he is not about to let it slide without getting to the bottom of it. (In which Ronan has fallen and can't get up, and Gansey is a concerned dad.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Keep It To Myself; I Know What It Means

**Author's Note:**

> Title from (the oh-so-appropriate) "Dreams" by Brandi Carlile.

Richard Campbell Gansey III, for all his conscious effort to remain humble in the face of his foreseeably imminent greatness, could not help but pride himself on at least a few things. He was great at reading rapidly. He had always had the sort of loopy-but-neat penmanship that warranted a mention in teachers’ comments. For a couple years now, he had managed to wrangle the beast that was the Camaro more or less successfully (quite often less, but still). And lastly, and most importantly, he possessed the ability to read his friends like books.

Not to _understand_ them, or to get their essence-- he was more than humble enough to admit that he was entirely shitty at both of those things. He had a long tradition of befriending people who were wonderfully difficult to understand.

No, by reading, he meant something a little closer to, if less magical than, what went on inside 300 Fox Way. He could take one look at Blue or Adam or Noah or Ronan and deduce what was, as the kids say, ‘up’. Not just that they were feeling emotion, but the nature of the emotion itself: if they were irritated, if they were grieving, if they were over the moon. Whether or not it should be discussed. He had once tried to explain it to Jane, in the hopes that, psychic’s daughter and all, she might understand, but he hadn’t been able to pin down the ‘how’ of it with words. Even psychics, Blue had said, had a process. Gansey did not have a process.

Perhaps it was less reading and more knowing.

So this was how he knew something was really truly wrong with Ronan: he did not know what was wrong with Ronan.

And there was usually something. It was _Ronan Lynch_ , after all; he wasn’t exactly what came to mind when Gansey thought ‘carefree.’

It hadn’t started at any moment he could pinpoint, hadn’t been triggered by one phrase or look or punch the way most things were with Ronan. Instead, the shift in behavior had appeared slowly sometime in the long summer days after things had finally sort-of settled down again, unnoticeable until Gansey couldn't _not_ notice, and one morning he woke up to find himself living with a different person altogether.

A person who left the house during daylight hours (instead of only when they were out of beer) and who had begun swearing constantly _under_ his breath (instead of constantly _over_ it) and who had begun to sing out ungodly screeching noises in the shower (which Gansey was fairly certain even Chainsaw, eternally faithful to the boy, thought horrific). A person who had taken to zoning out abruptly, wearing a permanently tense and pained grimace, and-- most disturbing of all-- suddenly caring what Gansey thought.

“Should I start eating breakfast?” The gravelly all-day morning voice of the boy in question, practically shouting over what sounded like a train charging through Monmouth, shook Gansey out of his thoughts.

“What?” Gansey practically shouted back.

The noise ceased. It had been the newly dreamed milk steamer that was perched precariously atop the minifridge, he realized. “Should I start eating breakfast?” Ronan repeated.

“It’s a bit late at night for that,” Gansey said, and then immediately felt rather stupid.

“Asshole,” said Ronan. Gansey could hear paper rip as he emptied a sugar packet into his latte, his voice muffled from the kitchen/bathroom/apparently now professional café. Gansey prayed internally that he was having decaf. “I mean in general. Daily basis sorta thing.”

“Well.” It was more of an independent thought than a transition. Gansey deliberated for a moment, easing his book closed and brushing his thumb over his lip. He considered his words carefully: the urge to be snarky was strong, but he didn't want to endanger the results of his experiment.

Gansey, understander by trade, knower by nature, knew of only one way to handle things he did not understand. The scientific method hadn't failed him yet. And so he had set up a sort of test, with three hypothetically independent variables, the three things that had changed more or less immediately antecedent to the development of this new Ronan.

First: Noah had begun to play up the ghost thing a little more. Of course, it wasn’t like he could help it, the poor thing, but it was true nonetheless. Just a few months back Gansey hadn’t known Czerny to feel so ephemeral, or to seem to drift through walls, or to pop up behind you and spook you.

Gansey didn’t want to blame Noah. Noah was one of those people you couldn’t blame, because it just made a you objectively a worse person, and anyway, it wasn’t as though Noah had intended to do anything wrong. Still, it remained a very real possibility that this haunti-- _new_ _behavior_ of Noah’s might possibly have had something to do with this new behavior of Ronan’s.

Gansey’s second problem was Adam Parrish.

That was a bad way to phrase it. Adam Parrish himself was anything but a problem. Adam, Gansey thought, was a sort of natural antidote to problems, inherently predisposed to fixing. Perhaps it was less Adam, and more his new location.

Ronan had begun to frequent Adam’s St. Agnes apartment over the past few months, spending long summer evenings and nights away from Monmouth, and while Gansey didn't want to be suspicious, he couldn't ignore that the beginning of this new habit of Ronan's coincided almost perfectly with the beginnings of the rest. He spent these nights fretful, awake and alone save for the occasional appearance of Noah, trying to come up with what might be going on in Ronan’s head. Maybe it was something about being so close to the church that had changed him. Or maybe Ronan was considering moving out of Monmouth for good. Or maybe it was triggered by sitting there, bored, while Adam worked on his summer homework. Or maybe Ronan was going out into the empty Henrietta streets and doing risky things, just telling Gansey he was at Adam’s. Or maybe he was inhaling large quantities of airborne mold from the loft's walls. That last thought especially had plagued Gansey repeatedly.

Lastly: it was hard to say this without embarrassing himself. He and Jane had gotten rather more... Attached. It was little new routines here and there-- his occasional dinners at Nino’s without the rest of the gang, early mornings in Monmouth with just the two of them, phone calls at quiet and electric hours of the night-- but little things added up.

The thought that he might have changed Ronan was rather unsettling to Gansey. He wasn’t quite comfortable with the idea that actions of his could cause such a dramatic shift in another person. When it had first occurred to him to test for this, that _he_ might be the root of the issue, it had kept him up so worried and confused that he hadn’t heard his phone the first two times Blue rang that night.

“It's just that you and Maggot and Parrish all eat breakfast,” Ronan reasoned, plunking a spoon into his mug and turning towards Gansey. He strode over and leant back on Gansey’s desk. “So I feel like I should too.”

“There’s nothing like a steaming hot bowl of peer pressure to start the day,” agreed Gansey absentmindedly. Ronan had just mentioned Adam, unprompted, by name, acknowledged their friend’s existence aloud, and it took Gansey a moment to realize that he couldn't remember the last time Ronan had done that. “Why are you asking me?”

“Because...” Ronan stirred and bit his lip. It almost looked thoughtful. “I want to know what you think?”

“Why?”

“Do I have to have a reason? I just want your fucking advice, god.”

There was, of course, one more variable Gansey could not control for. Joseph Kavinsky was really truly gone. While Gansey was aware (despite aforementioned modesty) that he was capable of quite a lot, raising the dead was as far as he knew not part of that skillset. (And if it was, the last person he felt like pulling out that showstopper for was Kavinsky.) He would just have to go about his test with the three conditions he had now and hope for the best. Besides, he had known Ronan pre-Kavinsky, and it wasn’t as though Kavinsky had been responsible for the ‘old’ Ronan, so why should his absence be responsible for the new one?

And so Gansey had set about conducting his tests in the hope that one of those was the reason, first asking Noah (as politely as possible) to stay out of Monmouth for the week. It hadn’t seemed to have any effect on Ronan, who had still been distant, jittery, and grim.

Then, Gansey had run a week where, despite himself, he tried to return his daily routine to as pre-Blue a condition as possible. He spent evenings doing his summer reading, not out with Jane, and late nights with his model of Henrietta, not on the phone. To the scientific Gansey’s moderate disappointment and the human Gansey’s immense relief, it hadn’t caused any change in Ronan besides the purchase of more beer-- an extra six-pack here and there, so Gansey could get drunk instead of moping around the house so much. Of course, Ronan hadn’t said it aloud like that, but it had been implied. Ronan had always been considerate like that.

Now, he was in the middle of testing for lack of Parrish. Whenever Ronan had made moves to leave the house, Gansey had come up with something to keep him there that evening: “Ronan, the shower drain needs unclogging, and I don’t know how. Can you help me?” “Ronan, I think Chainsaw tore my Main Street apart. Can you help me fix it?” “I brought home some scotch from my parents’ last week, Ronan. I need help finishing it.” Earlier that night, he had almost asked Ronan to help him mow the lawn, before remembering they didn’t have one.

Gansey felt bad about ordering him around, but it was for Ronan’s good, anyway. He was getting results: Ronan’s behavior had, mysteriously, only gotten weirder. And it wasn't as though testing wasn't taking its toll on Gansey too. He had taken to staying up even later into the night, watching in case Ronan decided to make a 3 AM departure. Anything in the name of science, right?

He had told Blue and Noah about the plan, but he didn’t think he could tell Adam. He was too empathetic and far from subtle; he might start treating Ronan differently during the conditions for which he had to be present and Gansey couldn't risk his variables like that.

“But why do you keep wanting my advice all of a sudden?” Gansey pressed.

“What the hell is your damage? I was just asking.” Ronan pushed himself off the desk and began to hulk off past the couch towards his room, mug in hand, cursing under his breath.

That was when Gansey’s brain turned the puzzle piece around and suddenly, the jigsaw snapped together.

Ronan’s new behavior had been exacerbated this week, but it wasn't directly because Adam hadn't been there. It was indirect. Adam's physical absence necessitated more of his metaphorical presence. The new Adam-shaped hole in their world required that they conjure him up in their heads more to make up for it.

In other words, the issue wasn't Adam. It was the thought of Adam.

“What’s up with you and Parrish?” Gansey tried to phrase it as casually as possible.

It didn’t really work. Ronan tensed immediately, his step stuttering. He got himself back on two feet and turned around. “What?”

“I was just wondering, what’s up with you and Adam?” Ronan didn’t answer, just sort of shook his head at him, and Gansey set his book down and pushed his wireframes down his nose to give him a stern look.

“Nothing’s up with me and-- and Parrish.”

“Are you fighting again?” Gansey tried to say it in his most pacific voice.

Ronan gave him a look back and meaningfully took a sip of his coffee. You could say what you wanted about Ronan Lynch, but he would never have to _say_ what he wanted about you to get his message across. He could simply do things and his action would carry more weight than language could ever manage.

While Gansey certainly appreciated the dramatic effect this achieved, there were times when he wished Ronan were more willing to use his words. Like right now.

“Okay, so you’re not fighting. Then, please, what on earth is going on?”

“Nothing!” Ronan said. “Nothing. Where the hell are you getting this from?”

“Ronan,” said Gansey. “Have a seat.”

Ronan did not sit.

“Ronan,” said Gansey again. He realized that his glasses were still balancing on the tip of his nose, and he took them off and folded them. “I don’t want to parent you. But I can tell that something is wrong, and perhaps it would help to talk about it.”

“Trust me, Dick,” Ronan scoffed. “It won’t help to talk about it.”

“So there is something.” Ronan sighed in exasperation, or maybe defeat. It didn't really matter much: his interactions with Gansey usually contained both. “Ronan,” Gansey said again. “Have a seat.”

Ronan sat.

Gansey pulled his knees up to his chest and leaned back against the armrest, so he could look Ronan in the eye from the other end of the couch. Ronan stretched out his legs over the seats between them in return, as if relaxing, but he had his latte pulled up close to his face, shoulders hunched. They were still wading through the chokingly hot days and muggy nights of mid-August. It was hardly a time to be curling up with hot coffee.

It was also hardly a time to be interrogating a Lynch, or doing anything besides sleeping, really, but Gansey also prided himself on his track record of following through on mysteries.

“Are you mad at me?” Gansey asked.

“I wasn’t until you opened your mouth,” Ronan spat. “As per usual.”

“Are you mad at Parrish?”

“No, fucker, I just told you that.”

“You know, Ronan, if he did something that upset you, you need to tell me.” Gansey paused for a moment. Was it possible Parrish had caused such grave injury to Ronan that Ronan had been pushed past anger? His nerves jumped up another level. Even suggesting to himself that Adam was capable of such a thing-- of violence, of betrayal, of cruelty-- was physically sickening. Gansey didn’t want to speak the possibility aloud, to put it out into the world outside his own convoluted head, but he did anyway. “If he hurt you, you need to tell me.”

“Adam wouldn’t hurt me,” said Ronan to his mug. _It is true_ , Gansey told the twist in his stomach. After all, this was Ronan Lynch speaking, and Ronan Lynch never lied.

But that didn’t mean, Gansey remembered, that he always told the whole truth.

The thought of Adam, he reminded himself. Not Adam. The thought of Adam.

“Ronan, does it hurt you to think about him?” Ronan looked up from his coffee abruptly, eyes wide like a deer in the headlights. He gulped. “I’ve noticed how you look at him. I’ve noticed how you act around him.”

“God,” said Ronan quietly, though with what intention Gansey wasn’t sure. It made him stupidly nervous not to know what Ronan meant. “Shit.”

“Maybe it wasn’t something that-- that Adam _meant_ to do, or maybe it was something small, and he probably doesn't even know-- does he know?” Ronan shook his head slightly, staring at his feet. “--but I know something’s changed, and I know you don’t always like to talk about things like this, and I know it can be hard, but it might be good for you--”

“Gansey, you can’t do anything.” Ronan took a long, slow, shaky sip of latte and set his mug down on the floor.

Gansey’s heart ached. What could Adam have done to turn the fighter so fragile? Unintentionally, too. “I can try to _help_ you do something--”

“You can’t fix it, Gansey, I’m telling you.”

“Then I’m not trying to fix it,” Gansey said, beginning to feel rather futile. “I just want to understand--”

“Gansey, you can’t understand.” There was a tightness to Ronan's hoarse voice that sounded as though he wanted to laugh, and also cry. It was not a good sound.

“I know you, Ronan, why can’t I understand?” Gansey asked gently. He wanted to remain diplomatic, of course, but he also wanted answers.

“You just can't.”

“Why not?” Gansey pressed.

“ _Because_ , you asshole! Blue can like you back!” Ronan yelled.

It had been 2 years and 9 days exactly since the last time Ronan had yelled at Gansey. Hearing it happen a second time whirled him straight back to that moment, those 10 or 12 seconds he didn't think he could ever forget. Ronan, broken. It was not a day or a person Gansey particularly wanted to revisit.

Sure, in those 2 years and 9 days since Ronan had yelled near him, and around him, and past him, and over him, and quite often vaguely in his general direction, but Ronan’s aggression was, generally speaking, never pointed _at_ him. Usually, Ronan had something else to be angry about and someone else who needed to really hear about it besides his best friend. But here he was, yelling at him, and he was looking at Gansey in a way that retwisted the knot in Gansey’s gut double. Not a pissed-off way but a hurt way, as though Gansey had, despite the bright blood-painted warning, pressed on a bruise.

And then Gansey realized why he had yelled.

Ronan Lynch, creator of dreams, slayer of nightmares, who could wish into existence anything or anyone that he so pleased, dead or alive, inevitable or impossible, rooted in this world or firmly outside of it, was _envious_.

And then Gansey realized what he was envious of.

“Oh.” He tried to say it in a voice that contained as little surprise as possible. Everything Ronan had ever said to Adam and vice versa reworked itself instantly in Gansey’s head, and he felt rather dizzy. He couldn’t help himself: “Oh,” he said again. “ _Oh_.”

“What, you-- oh my god. Jesus Mary Christ in heaven.” Ronan covered his face with his hands. “I thought you had figured it out.”

“Well, I knew _something_ was wrong! I just didn’t...”

“Oh my fucking god. Shit.”

“Not wrong,” Gansey followed up quickly, realizing that that may not have been the best choice of words. “I knew that something was up, I didn’t know it was that you were in love with Adam--”

Ronan made a positively strangled noise.

“Had a _thing_ for Adam--”

Ronan made a noise that sounded like Chainsaw with laryngitis. His tan cheeks were beginning to tinge a furious red.

“Were _crushing_ on Ad--”

“Gansey, Jesus Christ, please stop.”

“This makes so much sense, though,” continued Gansey, mostly to himself. “How long has it been going on? I mean, that’s why you’ve been staring at him all the time, and why you flinch every time we talk about him, and why you dreamed the goddamn hulk of an espresso machine--”

“Gansey.”

“That is currently crushing our fridge like a soda can, because Adam said he liked lattes--”

“But too expensive, I know, I know. I was just trying--”

“And that’s also why you dreamed--”

“ _Ganseeeyyy_ ,” Ronan groaned, pushing his hands back up over his thoroughly crimson face. “You don’t have to keep telling me how pathetically in-too-deep I am with this boy. I’m aware.”

Gansey sighed. “Sorry.” He studied his hands, which had come to rest on top of his knees. He looked over at Ronan, who looked absolutely miserable.

“A year,” said Ronan abruptly.

“What?”

“You asked how long it’s been, and it’s been a year.”

“Man,” said Gansey.

Maybe Ronan had been shifting habits for far longer than he thought. Or maybe it had just been a summer change. Either way, how hadn’t he noticed? Then he shook himself out of his own head: this was not about him.

Gansey remembered the first question he had asked that had hit home with Ronan, and the implications of his response: that it hurt Ronan, physically hurt, to think of Adam. What that meant. That every time Ronan had whispered unprompted cusses to himself or charged his car too fast down local roads, he had been trying to chase away an ache that Gansey hadn’t even known existed.

Ronan had looked so hurt when he had yelled at him that Gansey had barely processed what his words had meant: _He is to me as Blue is to you._

_He can never like me back. He will never love me back._

_My want is to me as your want is to you._

Gansey knew that want. He knew its jagged edges and smooth spots and the places it wore down to rough grain if handled too often; he knew its intricacies and engravings; he knew its weight. He couldn’t imagine what it would feel like in his palms with total impossibility carved into it, too.

“I’m sorry.”

Ronan barked a short, rough laugh. “Yeah. Thanks.”

“So you...” Gansey cleared his throat, and Ronan fixed him with a raised-brow look. “I mean, when-- was there something that...” Ronan wouldn’t finish his sentence for him, although judging from the twist of amusement on his face he was probably well aware of what Gansey was trying to ask. “I mean was Adam how you... Knew?”

“Knew what?”

Now Ronan was just being stubborn. Gansey resisted the urge to roll his eyes.

“Knew that you were an individual who experienced homosexual attraction?”

Ronan cracked a full grin. “Well, geez, Dick, what a way with words you have.” This moment felt like a sliver of the old Ronan-- not the pre-crush one Gansey had been looking to rediscover, but the old old Ronan. The one who had never known nightmares. “Is my trainwreck of a crush on Parrish how I know I’m one of the gays?”

“You could put it that way, yes.”

“I don’t know. No.” Ronan sighed deeply as though he was trying to get his thoughts together, his shoulders heaving up and then down. “I knew before-- before him.”

“You did?”

“Yeah,” Ronan said, in a tone that implied that was the longest answer he was going to give.

“Not... Not _Joseph_?” Gansey asked, despite it.

Ronan gave him a steely look. That was a much longer answer, but all he could really understand of it was _Back off._

 _This is not about me_ , he reminded himself. _This is not about what I  _ _want to know._ But, as per usual, his curiosity grabbed the controls before his common sense could intervene. “Why didn’t you come out to me?”

Ronan let out another laugh, this one more genuine. “How do I put this?” He hummed in mock musing, exaggeratedly wrinkling his brow and jabbing his thumb into his lip, impersonating a hulkier, tattooed Gansey. Despite knowing that he was on the receiving end of the mockery, Gansey couldn’t help but smile. What a lovely thing it was to be reminded that Ronan still knew what childhood felt like. How good it was to know that he hadn’t lost everything. “Oh! Right. Your mother is a Republican.”

Now Gansey did roll his eyes. “Does anyone else know?”

“Noah.”

“But not Adam?”

Ronan shook his head. “At least, I hope not. But I mean, I thought I was being subtle, and now _you_ figured it out.” He did his smoker’s breath and tipped his head to one side, leaning it against his forearm on the back of the couch, and his icy blue eyes slipped closed, reminding Gansey how terribly late it was. Sleepy Ronan was one of Gansey’s favorites, though. He always seemed more dream than human after dark. More child than man. More beak than claws. “Do you think he’s figured out?”

“I mean,” said Gansey. “I didn’t really figure it out. You kind of told me.”

“Don’t remind me. But you knew something was up.”

“Would it really be so bad if Adam knew?” Gansey asked.

Small and to himself, Ronan smiled. What a sweet, naïve thing to ask, the smile said plainly.

“But even if nothing comes of it, it may help you move past it,” Gansey added. This was a fair point, Gansey knew, and he might as well lay it on the table despite the longstanding fact that whatever time of day it was, Ronan Lynch gave exactly as many shits about ‘fair points’ as he did speed limits and balanced diets.

Which was to say none.

“I told you you wouldn’t understand.” He opened his eyes to look at Gansey along the edge of the couch. “I’d prefer that Adam not hate me.”

“Adam wouldn’t hate you,” Gansey responded. Ronan just smiled again. “He wouldn’t. He’s a decent person, you know.”

“I know,” Ronan replied. “I fucking know. He’s too goddamn decent all the time.” He rubbed an arm over his face. “God, I’m so gay. So gay. Shit. Sorry, it’s just-- you don’t even fucking get it.”

“I do get it,” Gansey said quickly. Ronan quirked an eyebrow, and Gansey realized-- too late, as per usual-- what he had said. “Oh. I mean, not like _that_ \--”

“It’s okay, Dick,” Ronan said, smirking. “I get it too.”

It was nice to be known, Gansey thought. And it was nice to know someone, and if not to understand them fully then to at least have an understanding. 

His head, which had been buzzing in alternately shocked and concerned cycles, began to quiet in the still, cozy night of Monmouth. It still had a funny feeling to it, though. One could only process so many new points of data at one time. At least for now he had a rough idea of a conclusion. He hoped he would understand more in the morning.

And as he watched him doze off, all dream in the darkness, Gansey hoped on Ronan’s behalf as well, as he always had and always would: that there might someday be a morning where Adam would wake up and understand, too.

**Author's Note:**

> Before and even after reading TRK, I couldn't shake the feeling that our ever-perceptive Gansey boy must have noticed /something/ about Ronan's odd behavior around Adam (and his wording in TRK seems to indicate as much). I also couldn't shake the feeling that there were, like, no Ronan-properly-coming-out fics (and there can never be enough Ronan-and-Gansey-being-emotionally-close fics tbh). So: I hope you enjoyed my first TRC fic! I live for crit so please let me know what you think!


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